Heir to stolen Jewish property
foiled by Czech restitution law By Magnus Bennett

PRAGUE, April 24 2001 (JTA) – The Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia liked
nothing better than to relax in his favorite wartime residence 15 miles north
of here.

The Panenske Brezany Castle wasn't Reinhard
Heydrich's home, however.

It had been taken from a Jewish businessman of
Czech nationality, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who had escaped from the country
before the Nazis invaded.

When Bloch-Bauer died just after the end of the
war, he left the castle to his two nieces and a nephew. But the postwar
Communist regime had different plans, absorbing the property into state hands.

It seemed as if the castle would finally return
to the family when Czech legislators passed a new restitution law 10 years ago
allowing seized property to be handed back to descendants of original owners.

But there was a catch. Only Czech citizens could
apply.

That came as a body blow to Marie Altmann,
Bloch-Bauer's heir and only surviving niece, who recalls with fondness the
summers she spent at the castle as a young girl until she and her family were
forced to flee from Europe in the late 1930s. She had never taken up Czech
citizenship and therefore could not make a claim for her heritage.

"It is terribly unjust," the
85-year-old told JTA from her home in Los Angeles. "What has my
citizenship got to do with this? My uncle was a very good Czech and a friend of
Tomas Masaryk," Czechoslovakia's first president, "and yet I cannot
claim the property." Ironically, Altmann and other foreigners can make
claims in the Czech Republic for looted artwork, which are not subject to the
same citizenship restrictions.

Altmann's U.S. attorney is livid about the
restitution clause.

"In our view, it is nothing less than
scandalous," said Randol Schoenberg, who is also trying to recover from
Austria a set of valuable paintings once owned by Bloch-Bauer in a separate
case. "This is a property used by Heydrich which was taken from a Jewish
family and was never returned. Mrs. Altmann has not received a penny from her
uncle's estate."

Schoenberg believes the case epitomizes a much
wider problem, a view backed by the British-based group Search and Unite, which
specializes in locating people who lost Czech property during the Nazi and
Communist eras.

Founder David Lewin, who said he had already been
approached by half a dozen non-Czech citizens from around the world who had
failed in Czech property claims, argued: "It is totally wrong of any
government to accept that people have been wronged but to refuse to give
property back because they are of a different nationality."

Lewin believes there are many other cases like
Altmann's, most of which involve Jewish claimants. He is particularly concerned
that many have been put off from applying for their properties back because of
the law, which stipulates that property claims must be made by May 25 this
year.

The pressure is building on the Czechs to rethink
their policy. Baroness Sarah Ludford, a member of the European Parliament,
wants to make changes in the restitution clause a prerequisite for the Czech
Republic's planned accession to the European Union.

She raised the issue in a letter this month to a
European commissioner, Guenther Verheugen, after hearing of a similar case to
Altmann's from a British citizen.

Describing the legislation as a "serious
injustice," she told Verheugen: "It seems to me to offend against the
ban in the E.U. treaties against discrimination on the grounds of nationality
for the heirs resident in and holding citizenship of an E.U. country to be
disbarred from reclaiming property in the Czech Republic."

If necessary, Ludford intends to raise the issue
on the floor of the European Parliament in an attempt to embarrass the Czech
Republic into a change of heart.

That seems unlikely at the moment. A spokeswoman
for the Czech Ministry of Finance, which oversees issues of property and
restitution, said the current law did not allow any exceptions. If there are to
be any changes in the law, it must come from the Czech Parliament, she said.

In the meantime, Altmann is left with nothing
more than distant memories of a golden age.

"I see no point in going back to Panenske
Brezany," she said. "The memories are definitely no longer there
because I am sure it has all changed. It once had a beautiful park, with so
many flowers. It was like a fairy tale."